THE ING NEWSLETTER No. 3, September 2000
GENERAL SCIENCE TELESCOPES AND INSTRUMENTATION OTHER NEWS FROM ING TELESCOPE TIME
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Applying for Time
Danny Lennon (Head of Astronomy, ING)
It is important that applicants for telescope time familiarise themselves with the latest news on instrumentation and detector combinations on offer, as well as with our scheduling restrictions. PPARC issue the PATT newsletter electronically, about one month before application deadlines, which contains up-to-date information on instrument availability. However for the very latest news always refer to the ING web pages, homepage http://www.ing.iac.es, where application forms and style files may also be obtained. The ING's scheduling constraints were summarised in the first issue of the Newsletter and will not be repeated here, please refer to that issue, which is also available on our public information web pages. Applications should be submitted by email only, by the appropriate deadline and no earlier than one month before that deadline, to ingpatt@ing.iac.es.
What's New
This is a busy year for the ING. We had the very successful commissioning of INGRID and are looking forward to its first full semester of operation which is about to get underway. It was gratifying to see the high demand for this instrument, and in semester 2000B this led to bright time being oversubscribed by more than a factor of six ! At the same time the pressure on dark time dropped to around two. Clearly INGRID is set to be one of the most important components of the ING's instrumentation suite.
This summer sees the commissioning of NAOMI which arrived on La Palma in early August. Work will continue on NAOMI into September when commissioning is due to be completed, with the first science runs being scheduled towards the end of 2000B.
The new vastly improved data acquisition system, UltraDAS, was successfully implemented on the IDS detectors making the INT our first all-UltraDAS telescope. The change in FITS format however appears to have caught some observers by surprise, for which we apologise. To rectify this Nic Walton (UltraDAS Project Scientist) and Guy Rixon (UltraDAS Software) have reproduced in this newsletter an article they have written to explain how to deal with the new format. During the course of this year it is expected that UltraDAS will be extended to the ISIS detectors on the WHT. Its debut there is eagerly awaited as it will replace the old and faltering data acquisition system on that instrument which is a significant contributor to WHT down-time.
Finally, the much awaited second Announcement of Opportunity for Wide Field Survey proposals was released, deadline September 30th 2000. Full details can be found at http://www.ing.iac.es/Astronomy/science/wfs/WFCsur.announce.html.
Visitor Instruments
The ING has seen a number of important visitor instruments receiving time on the INT and WHT over the years; CIRSI, S-CAM, MOMI and SAURON to name but a few. As is normal in such cases the observing team is allocated a contact person before they or their equipment come out, usually, but not necessarily, the Support Astronomer. In general instrument setup and testing goes well, however there have been a few problems after some observing runs primarily concerning identification and shipment of equipment to the owners' institution. These problems generally occur when the observing team leave site immediately after their observing run before equipment is properly packed away and labelled.
In an attempt to alleviate this problem we now ask all owners of such equipment to designate one member of their observing team as being responsible for the supervision of the packing and shipment of their equipment. This person will be responsible for signing-off packages for shipment off-island and should remain on-site until the relevant paperwork is completed, a Contents Identification Form.
Email contact: Danny Lennon (djl@ing.iac.es)
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GENERAL SCIENCE TELESCOPES AND INSTRUMENTATION OTHER NEWS FROM ING TELESCOPE TIME © Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes